Why would Uber/Lyft cars be driving around looking for fares like taxis? They are going strictly by the app, so it’s not like they can’t park when the app isn’t giving them any rides, and usually they are just going from one ride to the next as they are scheduled back to back.

Nowhere to park. Also, they want to be close to the "good" places so they get picked when a rider shows up.

If one Uber car can take 2 people to and from work each day then that should free up 1 parking spot for the Uber and 1 more parking spot can be reclaimed for other use. :)

Not if they were the two people catching a bus that made running the bus every 15 mins rather than every 30mins viable, so now 40 people stopped using transit and 20 of them drive and take a park each. Then this slowed two other bus routes, and so on.

Induced demand and congestion are complex. A taxi is probably better than a car, but neither cars or taxis have enough capacity to viably challenge congestion. You need mass transit that runs frequently and isn't stuck behind cars.

Taxis and ubers are great if you take mass transit but need a back up. Otherwise, you might always be stuck with your car because you lack confidence that you will always be able to take the bus or metro.

Huh, I think this is actually a case where uber's model is a net good rather than just extractive.

There's still congestion to deal with, but a bunch of people whose main work has no set hours who can go 'it's raining, time to taxi some people who don't want to walk or cycle today' synergises well with active transport and transit.

The issue is not parking. The issue is that these cars remain on the road all day, creating congestion. Commuters are only clogging the roads during commutes. Thus “rush hour.”

Now we've gone in a circle.

The question was why they stay on the road when they're not delivering someone. If the issue isn't lack of parking, what is it?

If two people want to travel from the suburbs to the city and they have their own cars, two journeys are made.

If they travel by taxi there's only one car on the road - but the taxi has to do a third trip, going back from the city to the suburbs between passengers. That trip is likely to be made without a passenger - because in the morning rush hour, far more people want to go in one direction than the other.

Of course, in some cases taxis may help reduce congestion - transporting people to and from train stations, and allowing people who usually cycle to transport bulky items, might enable more car-free living.

Interestingly, I was introduced to the term "drayage" in another thread, but seems apt here. I think some kind of last mile car service at the train stations would improve transit overall. But the 8-ball is having that transit system in the first place. Replacing one kind of inefficient car transportation with another improves nothing.

In the late 90s, tuktuks would hang out outside of metro stations in Beijing to take people their last mile. For some reason, that isn't the case today.

The question is, what kind of parking? A lot of the available parking is in structures that cost to park in, and involve some overhead getting in and out, such as getting through a gate, wandering around the structure for an available space, etc. Not conducive to being used by an Uber or cabbie to wait for a call to go pick someone up. Finding on-street parking is much more dicey.

The commuter and residential parking doesn't free up for Uber drivers if it's not being used by its primary customers.

Disclosure: Extrapolating from how it works in my town.

Sure, so then the problem is parking, but it's the type and not the amount.

Then I dare say there is not only one issue. Parking is also a huge disaster in many dense cities (and probably also results in a bunch of wasted driving time circling for parking!).

So then you make more parking which begets yet more cars.

Cities already have absolutely massive amounts of their real estate dedicated to parking. The answer to this problem is not and never will be “more of the stuff that’s causing the problem”.

They loiter in no parking areas, same as the cabbies.

You're not going to get a ticket for waiting in a non parking spot in NYC. You'll just get asked to move if someone needs it

There isn’t anywhere to park in downtown SF (for example) that doesn’t cost money.

There is still some time in-between rides where there are no passengers in the car. If riders had a car, that dead-weight car would not be on the road.

When it’s busy, Ubers at least will get their next ride about five minutes before completing their current ride.

True, sometimes it will be equivalent to car travel in that way. But it will never be _always_ true. So overall, Ride share decreases car ownership, but increases traffic.

I'm not sure. The fact that Uber drivers aren't cruising for fares is at least a huge improvement to the way taxis worked. Having spent 9 years in Beijing, it seemed like an even bigger improvement when ride sharing and even just being able to schedule a taxi with an app meant that cars and people looking for rides were connected much more easily and didn't have to go looking for each other (as I often did before).

There are actually places in Beijing to wait for assignments outside of major clogged ring roads and arterials. But it really depends on the design of your city.

I don’t know if it’s that straightforward of a comparison—while it may be true that taxis are bad for traffic, you have to take into account what the use of them is: transporting people around. If you consider the alternative where taxis don’t exist, at least some percentage of taxi passengers would probably just bring their own personal cars into the city, thus making traffic much worse.

Thus, though it’s true that the impact of taxis on traffic is significant, the alternative is much worse. People still need to get around.

However, taxi/Uber/Lyfts are, y'know, moving people around while they circle the city. Commuters clog up the roads with that whole commuting thing, and those car parks are valuable real estate that could be used for anything else.